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The Philippines has made remarkable progress in improving the quality of basic education in recent decades. Even so, despite significant improvements in primary and secondary education, the number of students who drop out of school remains worryingly high. More than five million youths have failed to complete a basic education. Alternative Learning System (ALS) is a second-chance, informal education program operated by the Department of Education (DepEd) for out-of-school youths and adults. This report aims to assess the current implementation of ALS using a variety of sources , including recent surveys, and analyzes (a) the target populations, (b) current beneficiaries, (c) delivery modes (with a focus on learning facilitators’ contracting schemes), and (d) labor market returns to ALS. Key messages are as follows: (i) Only a small proportion of the target populations are enrolled in the ALS program, (ii) the first target groups for ALS are students who drop out of high school for financial reasons, (iii) performance-based payment is expected to improve performance, (iv) the current arrangement for monitoring activities within the ALS program can be improved, (v) labor market returns to ALS are significant only when learners successfully pass the secondary A&E exam, and (vi) small class size (fewer than 40 learners per facilitator) is more efficient. The report concludes that a holistic approach is required for a socially efficient solution for students who do not complete school and those who are at high risk. An expansion of ALS may distort incentives among students currently in school, and coordinated efforts with other programs such as the Alternative Delivery Mode are becoming increasingly important. Earlier intervention guarantees greater returns.

Sri Lanka is increasingly seeking to ensure that its public school system not only delivers greater shares of students who have completed higher secondary and tertiary education, but also that all students obtain a much better education. Raising teacher effectiveness is considered as crucial for achieving these aims. This paper reviews the literature on teacher management in Sri Lanka, and points to what may be critical teacher management issues. The paper also outlines considerations and options for addressing these issues, informed by international evidence on approaches to improve teacher effectiveness.

Evidence on the impacts of a large-scale expansion in pre-primary education is limited and mostly circumscribed to high- and middle-income nations. This study estimates the effects of such an expansion on progression in primary school in rural communities in Guatemala, where the number of pre-primary schools increased from about 5,300 to 11,500 between 1998 and 2005. Combining administrative and population census data in a difference-in-differences framework, the analysis finds that access to pre-primary education increased by 2.4 percentage points the proportion of students that progress adequately and attend sixth grade by age 12. These positive although limited effects suggest the need for complementary actions to produce substantial improvements in adequate progression.

School dropout is a growing concern in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole, because of its consequences for economic productivity, the inclusiveness of growth, social cohesion, and increasing youth risks. This paper utilizes more than two decades of household survey data to construct a systematic overview of school dropout at the primary and secondary levels in Central America, including recent trends, causes and consequences, and evidence on what works to reduce dropout. Within each country, poverty, rurality, and indigenous group membership are the strongest correlates of dropout, reflecting several underlying factors that affect the marginal benefits and costs of staying in school. Global and regional evidence increasingly points to common policy priorities for reducing dropout across Central America, including addressing remaining gaps in access at the pre-primary and secondary levels, improving the quality of education at all levels, and strengthening the coverage, targeting, and coherence of existing programs aimed at improving education outcomes. However, additional rigorous evaluations, including cost data, are needed to identify the most effective specific approaches in each country.

This report aims to explore the following: (i) how does the performance (as well as attendance/absenteeism) of socially disadvantaged Moldovan secondary students compare to that of better-off students; (ii) what are the determinants of performance and attendance, in particular those that are under control of the education system and can be influenced in the course of education reforms so that to improve the quality of education for students from both genders and from all socio-economics backgrounds; and (iii) examine the risks associated with the school network consolidation to inform ongoing education reforms (and ensure that students directly affected by the reform are adequately accommodated in the receiving schools). To answer these questions, the analysis of the student-level education management information system (EMIS) and program for international student assessment (PISA) 2009 plus datasets have been conducted which together have more than 500 variables on various aspects of schooling in Moldova, including the socio-economic status and vulnerabilities such as being an orphan or single-parent child, having parent and parents abroad or unemployed, having disabilities, ethnic minority status etc. The EMIS data present a number of important variables for the whole population of students but has a number of shortcomings in particular related to the completeness and quality of data for vulnerable students which can and should be addressed by the ministry in the future.

This paper presents evidence from the first three years of a randomized controlled trial of a government-administered pilot teacher performance pay program in Punjab, Pakistan. The program offers yearly cash bonuses to teachers in a sample of public primary schools with the lowest mean student exam scores in the province. Bonuses are linked to three school-level indicators: the gain in student exam scores, the gain in school enrollment, and the level of student exam participation. Bonus receipt and size are also randomly assigned across schools according to whether or not the teacher is the school’s head. On average, the program increases school enrollment by 4.1 percent and student exam participation rates by 3.4 percentage points, both in the third year. The analysis does not find that the program increases student exam scores in any year. Mean impacts are similar across program variants. The positive mean impact on school enrollment is mainly seen in urban schools and the positive mean impact on student exam participation rates is only seen in rural schools.

The main objective of the report is to provide recommendations for policy makers and sector managers to help improve service delivery and the resultant outcomes in primary education. The fundamental premise of this analysis stems from Punjab Social Sector Public Expenditure Review conducted in FY2013.

Reliable evidence is needed to design policies that will allow overcoming Timor-Leste's remaining challenges in provision of quality education. In recent post-conflict years, aided by availability of oil revenues, Timor-Leste has been able to considerably improve availability of schools and access to education. This report presents findings of the 2012 Education Survey, collaboration between the Ministry of Education, the National Directorate of Statistics, AusAID and the World Bank. The survey collected detailed information at all primary, pre-secondary and secondary schools in the country. Its objectives were to support the improvement of Timor-Leste's education quality and service delivery through building a solid information source and analytical foundation which will allow for sound, evidence-based policy making. The survey results indicate that student absenteeism should be a major cause for concern. More than one third of grade one students were absent from school on the day of the survey, in some districts it was half or even more. Education levels of primary school teachers are low, with the majority only having secondary education. For 71 percent of primary school teachers the highest level of education is secondary school, for 6 percent it is even lower. Both demand and supply side interventions are needed to tackle the challenges faced. Some key policy areas should be: 1) improving school attendance through creating appropriate demand-side incentives; 2) enhancing teacher quality; 3) strengthening instruction language policy; 4) improving education system management; 5) improving school infrastructure and learning environment; and 6) ensuring adequate supply of textbooks.

Students in low-income countries often have trouble learning to read; 80-90 percent of second and third graders in some countries cannot even read a single word and may know few if any letters (RTI 2009, 2010, 2011a, 2011b). The reasons are linked to limited instructional time, textbooks or parental help, potentially poor nutrition, or complex teaching methods that originated in high-income countries. Despite relative affluence, the academic performance in the Arab world has been a problem, with countries scoring on international tests much lower than expected based on per capita income level. Similarly Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA) in various countries has shown lower reading speeds than one would expect. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, which use the Arabic script, the issues are similar. The interaction of the perceptual and linguistic complexities turns Arabic reading into a complex multistage exercise. A reader of the Arabic script must: (a) decipher the text, (b) predict the vowels and keep multiple alternative words in working memory to test and decide on meaning, and (c) make linguistic sense in the case of Arabic. This process means that readers need to identify words faster than in other scripts in order to make sense of the text, but in fact they identify them more slowly. Not surprisingly, some studies suggest that the Arabic script may be read more slowly than visually simpler scripts or linear scripts. Education for All implies that nearly all students must somehow learn fluent reading very quickly when they start school in order to then progress to higher level topics. This must be achievable in all the languages and scripts used in low-income countries. By focusing on these lower-level variables this is doable.

Students in lower-income countries often acquire limited literacy in school and often drop out illiterate. For those who stay, the problem is not detected until it is too late to intervene. Oral reading fluency tests given in the early grades can quickly and inexpensively assess student literacy. For this reason, one-minute reading studies have been popular. A search carried out in early 2010 showed that over 50 fluency studies have been conducted in various countries, and that norms have been established in the U.S., Mexico, and Chile. The studies often reported data in ways that were not easily comparable, and few had collected nationally representative data. However, the findings consistently showed very limited achievement. A multi-country study matching reading and instructional time data showed that the deficits are largely due to limited reading practice. The findings also suggest that few governments have taken action to improve reading outcomes on the basis of test scores. However, a number of pilot reading programs that emphasized phonics and practice were financed by donors and implemented by Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). These brought about substantial improvements within a few months. Their success suggests that it is eminently feasible to raise student outcomes significantly through evidence based reading methods. Overall, the oral reading fluency tests have shown good psychometric properties, although reading achievement typically shows much variability within classes and sampling procedures could improve. Cross-linguistic comparability is rough and approximate, but overall it is possible to monitor reading outcomes across time and countries.

This study examines the changes in Vietnam's primary and secondary education over the past 20 years as well as key factors that affect such critical educational outcomes as attendance, grade attainment, and student achievement in order to derive implications for public education policy. It is divided into an analytical report and shorter overview/policy report. The study finds significant improvement in attendance, attainment, and achievement across all populations. Nonetheless, vulnerable populations (in particular the poorest and ethnic minorities) continue to fare poorly as a result of persistent, and in some cases, increasing inequalities in educational attainment and poor student achievement. Educational attainment and achievement are also shown to be complementary to a large extent. Despite the methodological limitations, evidence consistently confirms that certain characteristics of schools and teachers are significantly related to both educational outcomes. This opens the door for public policy and provides multiple (potential) policies 'entrance points' for addressing the remaining challenges. Some measures have implications for public funding, its priorities and/or efficiency, and others are more closely related to the management of public institutions. Some of the main policy implications derived from the analytical findings are re-asserting or expanding priorities for public funding through expanding support for the Fundamental School Quality Level (FSQL), and supporting full day schooling and conditional cash transfers for vulnerable groups; improving spending efficiency through better targeted fee exemptions and the strengthened application of teacher standards; and improving the management of public sector schools through higher principals' management capacity, strengthened accountability of schools to their communities and better information.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are becoming a popular tool for alleviating short-term poverty and reducing the inter-generational transmission of poverty. More than 30 developing and transition countries have implemented these programs, providing incentives to poor households to make investments in the human capital of their children. Programs vary in scale, transfer size, conditionality's, eligibility, and implementation features. This report is structured around five chapters as follows: the first chapter gives an overview of the program, the context in which it was implemented and available evidence on the impacts of the Female School Stipend Program (FSSP) as well as other CCTs. Chapter two focuses on the questions this evaluation sets out to answer and the methods and information used to answer them. The third chapter presents the results from the analysis and is structured around three evaluation questions regarding average impact, heterogeneity of impacts, and spillover effects. Chapter four performs the robustness checks of the findings, examining whether they are sensitive to preprogram trends, measurement error, endogenous compositional changes, and crowding-out effects. Finally, the conclusion discusses the implications of the results, some limitations of this evaluation, and areas that require further work.

In 2009, Zambia joined the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) trust fund program, the goal of which is to help countries improve their capacity to design, carry out, analyze, and use assessments for improved student learning. As part of the READ trust fund program, and in order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, Zambia participated in a formal exercise to benchmark this system under The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) program. SABER is an evidence-based program to help countries systematically examine and strengthen the performance of different aspects of their education systems. SABER-student assessment is a component of the SABER program that focuses specifically on benchmarking student assessment policies and systems. The goal of SABER-student assessment is to promote stronger assessment systems that contribute to improved education quality and learning for all. The importance of assessment is linked to its role in: providing information on levels of student learning and achievement in the system; monitoring trends in education quality over time; supporting educators and students with real-time information to improve teaching and learning; and holding stakeholders accountable for results. The SABER-student assessment framework is built on the available evidence base for what an effective assessment system looks like. The framework provides guidance on how countries can build more effective student assessment systems. The framework is structured around two main dimensions of assessment systems: the types/purposes of assessment activities and the quality of those activities. Assessment systems tend to be comprised of three main types of assessment activities, each of which serves a different purpose and addresses different information needs. These three main types are: classroom assessment, examinations, and large scale, system level assessments. This report focuses specifically on policies in the area of student assessment.